Extra (Hour)dinary Parenting » baby shower ideas: gifts for mom

Book Review: “Quiet Hero” a Lesson on Parenting’s Impact

ACMJ — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:58:20 +0000

This book is largely about one woman discovering her father’s significant role in the Polish resistance movement in Warsaw during WW2. At the factual level, it is a great lesson about the tremendous cost of war and the incredible acts of individual bravery that people exhibited. It reminds the reader that what we are experiencing now is nothing in comparison to the horrors of WW2. But at a deeper level, this was also a book about parenting, and about the effects of parenting through the generations.

I recommend this book for the parenting angle it offers if only to provide perspective on how much parenting has changed. Much of the change is for the best. Some of it is not. Some of those changes have pushed expectations and standards for parenting to an extreme, resulting in the kind of anxiety-filled “helicopter” parenting that occurs at one end of our social spectrum. At the other end, we have a rising number of single mother households whose income levels suggest they are just trying make ends meet and don’t have time to indulge in angst-filled debates over what impact attachment parenting and feeding on demand have on development.

Cosby’s book is a powerful reminder that even ignoring angst-filled debates is a luxury compared to the way her father came of age and how that impacted her own childhood. So many WW2 memoirs are, understandably, filled with such horror and grief that they can be difficult to even read. In telling her father’s tale, Cosby avoids that crushing sadness without sacrificing the truth. The result is an interesting story with an undercurrent message on parenting, doing what you can with what you have, and the opportunity for second chances even in the most difficult of relationships.

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Book Review: “Quiet Hero” a Lesson on Parenting’s Impact

Day by Day Pregnancy Tip #14: Baby Shower Giveaway Ideas

ACMJ — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:43:11 +0000

: Image by clevercupcakes via Flickr

We posted a couple weeks ago about a good idea for a baby shower (Children’s Book Baby Shower bingo). In response to that post, a reader wrote in asking what the prize should be for the childrens book baby shower game or any other baby shower games and giveaways. It’s a good question, and one that doesn’t get a lot of attention. What do you give the guests, the people that aren’t about to have a baby?

Here are a few suggestions for giveaway prizes that can go to the winner of a contest (like how many diaper pins/jelly beans are in the jar) or to a game winner as well as double as hostess gifts (you didn’t forget about those, did you!?):

Bath products:

Keep it simple but high quality. Fresh products are great, as are Lush bath products.

Stationary:

Thank you notes always come in handy, as do pretty blank cards.

Throws and blankets:

Amazon has its own line of linens, and regularly marks them way down. You can get some really luxurious throws and blankets for under $20. Seriously.

These are a few ideas, and very simple ones, but they will mean a lot to your guests and your hostesses, especially if you are having a very large baby shower where you will not get to spend a lot of time with each person. Also, if you make sure (by coordinating with the hostess in charge of games) that the baby shower games are fun, useful, and come with neat prizes, it will add energy and enthusiasm to the party and make it a little less silly, and a little more grown up, all of which will make it easier and more fun for you!

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Day by Day Pregnancy Tip #14: Baby Shower Giveaway Ideas

Mom-Preneur Product Review: Spell It Out Photos

ACMJ — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:40:28 +0000

If you follow my other blog – Yield to Pedestrian – at all, you know that photography is a big part of my life. I know, I know. Everyone is a budding photographer these days. But isn’t that the wonder of digital cameras? No more buying film, no more paying for developers and paper – it is a quick and fun way to let your creative side out without costing a fortune and taking all day.

While Yield to Pedestrian focuses on science and photography and such, this blog focuses, as you know, on parenting, pregnancy, and product reviews of mom and dad inventors and entrepreneurs. I always like it, however, when the two worlds collide, as they do in this product review of Spell It Out Photos.

Let me start by saying that as a web designer, I am very, very, very picky and critical of websites, and I loved this one. You have to check it out just for the Design Your Own Tool if nothing else. Just go, take 30 seconds, and smile.

Oh, did you want to know what I’m actually reviewing first? OK, if I must.

These two women take great digital photos of objects and places and designs that resemble letters in the alphabet. Then they turn those photos into names, messages, greeting cards, and all sorts of fun stuff. It sounds a little cheesy at first (I immediately thought of that booth at Disneyland where the artist paints your child’s name into princess-accented letters), but it is not. This is grown-up nature photography, with some true art photography thrown in. It puts a very sophisticated twist on the final product, which makes it quite giftable.

Giftable? Yes, this is a word, even if your spellchecker and mine don’t think so. Giftable is that rare condition of being useful for giving to a coach, a teacher, a parent, a grandparent, your child, your child’s friend, and the bus driver. Giftable is that state of existence where you don’t have to spend a fortune to convey your thoughtfulness and appreciation. Giftable is the attribute you like to see combined with “can purchase all in one place”. Giftable. Spell It Out Photos are giftable.

They are also hard to describe, which is why I am again going to insist you check out the “Design Your Own Tool”. I especially like how if you are doing something for say, your cousin in Albuquerque, all the letters will have a southwestern/ranch theme. If you are making a gift for a nature lover, all the photos can have a nature theme.

Spell It Out Photos sent me a few of their new greeting cards done with “Happy Birthday” and “Thank You” and similar messages, and I was struck by how nice it was to see something unique. I love stationary and have quite a lot of it, but these were a fun twist on the same old, same old without resorting to glitter. I like glitter, but I hate opening or giving a card that requires hand-washing to write or read. These cards are unique yet require no hand-washing. And that, that’s a pretty strong endorsement. Check it out!!!

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Mom-Preneur Product Review: Spell It Out Photos

The Glowing Product Review: My Tot Clock

ACMJ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:03:30 +0000

I love this clock. My son has had a terrible time sleeping since our move, and while we had (mostly) weaned him back into his own bed, back to sleeping through the night, and back to napping for longer than 45 minutes, we had not been able to get him to sleep past 5am, or even 4:30am.

Enter the clock.

The clock does all sorts of things, but what it does for us is allows us to set the time when it is okay to get out of bed in a way that a toddler can understand: with colors. The clock turns yellow at 6:10am at our house, giving our son the signal that it is ok to get up and about. This doesn’t mean he always sleeps until that time, but he is much better about resting some more if the clock is still glowing the color of sleep: purple.

The clock also has a timeout timer that turns the clock red, a potty time timer than turns it green, and a naptime timer in light blue. But even more important? It has a storytime component that is extremely comforting to kids. The clock’s creator – Pam – sent me two of the stories to try: the standard one and the Hare and the Tortoise. While my son is still a little young for the whole story, he clearly responded to the calming, mellow tone and to the melodic rhythm of the story. The clock then plays songs and some white noise afterwards.

After only three nights of having to “explain” the clock each morning and wait for it to turn yellow, the sleeping started to happen. We have had a couple of regressions, but overall it has become so so so so much better than before.

If you have any kind of sleep problems with your toddler or preschooler, I highly recommend this clock. It speaks “kid”, and lets you sleep in. Is there anything better than that?

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The Glowing Product Review: My Tot Clock

Gifts for Mom Product Review: Light Up Your Child’s Mind

ACMJ — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:17:39 +0000

I recommend reading Light Up Your Child’s Mind – I do – but at the same time, I have to admit that the book raised a lot of questions for me. It seemed to be a fairly obvious collection of sound advice: many children are gifted in some way or another, often in ways that the structure of education and schooling do not directly reward or recognize. The book provides tips on how to identify and encourage that giftedness, while still helping the child succeed within the education system, since, obviously, that system is such a gatekeeper to success as an adult.

What disturbed me about this book is that it needed to be written: are we as parents and as a society really so misguided that we don’t pay attention to the details of our children’s interests? Do we as parents really only value “A”s on the report cards and look for the weaknesses and deficiencies in our kids? Do people really assume that school is all the education a child needs and that the responsibility to educate and teach ends with the school day? Does anyone really think in a world full of diverse careers, subjects, and hobbies that there is only one kind of giftedness?

The nature of media reporting and even writing is to focus on what is odd, what is the outlying case, what is the sensational story – and this trend skews our perceptions of how statistically normal (or not) many of these situations are. i tend to believe that most people use common sense more than we think they do, and that most people raise their kids with love and empathy. However, this book, written by two educational psychologists of great standing, almost suggests by its very subject matter that no one is parenting with a critical mind or with common sense, or at least very few of us.

I do not mean to suggest here that the book has nothing to offer: in fact, it has a lot of good resource suggestions on where to go to help your child develop constructive and interesting projects that will further whatever area of giftedness he or she might have. But the bottom line premise of the book: that raising a gifted child and developing those gifts requires an attentive ear, an open mind, flexibility, and time and interest on the part of the parent – is still disturbingly obvious to me – suggesting that common sense in parenting is not as common as I might think.

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Gifts for Mom Product Review: Light Up Your Child’s Mind

Product Review Gifts for Mom: Your Best Birth

ACMJ — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:02:10 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of product reviews lately, in part because I have been inundated with items that people have sent me to look over. The book by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein pictured here, entitled Your Best Birth: Know All Your Options, Discover the Natural Choices, and Take Back the Birth Experience, took me a while to get through. This is not a bad thing – the book is just very dense and full of information.

I have read about 100+ parenting and pregnancy books at this point, and the second half of this one had some information new to me. The first half is largely exposition, setting up the birth options that are out there, explaining the trend towards hospital stays and C-sections, and describing other birthing options. I liked the way the information was presented there because it was not pushy (a rare thing in pregnancy books), but it wasn’t necessarily anything new. What *was* unique was the second half of the book that went into great detail on the practices and expertise of midwives and doulas.

I think a lot of people are interested in using a midwife and a doula, but do not necessarily know exactly what they do, how it is different from a doctor, how having a doctor can complement their work, and what else the midwives and doulas bring to the birth experience that will not be there if they are not there. The emphasis is my own, because that is truly the point: midwives and doulas bring something to the birth process that is not replicated in a hospital/doctor/nurse setting. That is what you are paying them for – that extra dimension.

This distinction is a fine one, but important – I think that it is a mistake to cast midwives and doulas as “alternatives to doctors”. This book does not do that, and in fact, they excel at incorporating throughout the text different tips and tricks from midwives and doulas that really emphasize how unique and useful they are. This focus on providing examples and details is the great strength of Your Best Birth and its unique contribution to the pregnancy literature field. My only criticism is that I felt there were a couple moments where the medical risks of home births were downplayed or left out of a storyline. This book tries to have a documentary feel to it, since it is the byproduct of a documentary on birthing in the United States, and – for me at least – that raised my expectations about the balance of information vs. interpretation that I expected to see. For some of the home birth stories, the glossing over of some of the medical realities deviated from the book’s more objective tone.

That criticism aside, this book has a friendly, conversational manner that presents some new and much-needed information on midwives and doulas that is worth reading. Available on Kindle as an e-book or as a regular book on Amazon, it is a good investment for first-time moms and moms who are wanting to understand how to make a second or third birth experience a little more customized that their first.

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Product Review Gifts for Mom: Your Best Birth

Product Review Gifts for Moms: Imag-inations Designs

ACMJ — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:53:20 +0000

The most interesting aspect of reviewing products is all the things I encounter that I did not know that I need until I review them.

Imag-inations.com Designs sent me several examples of their products, and about halfway through the samples of the various photo cards, birth announcements, greeting cards, and thank you cards I realized that the stationary fanatic in me was trumping the Internet geek in me and that I now *needed* some. For what I wasn’t sure, since it is May and I am not getting married, having a baby, baptizing a baby, thanking anyone for a major gift, or celebrating a major holiday anytime soon. But I knew I needed them.

I tend to think of the Internet as my personal little ESP device, by which I beam messages into the brains of those to whom I am close. Doesn’t that sound like a loving thing to do? Anyway, my weird analogies aside, I see the Internet as a nifty way to get information out there to family and friends, and so I tend to *not* send Christmas cards or other communications that go in the mail because the Internet is so much easier and cheaper.

However, in doing so, I am missing out on the fantastic tactile experience that is great stationary and great design. Imag-inations are both. All you do is send them the photo or photos you want to use (and there are great tips on the site about how to take the right kind of photo), and they send you back (for a fee of course – this is a mom-owned business) cards that knock the socks off of snapfish or kodak or any of those do-it-yourself photo card sites. These things are amazing.

The full pricing system is here, but I can sum it up for you fairly quickly: even though these things are customized, they are still cheaper than Papyrus. Papyrus stationary stores are my addiction, especially once Target starting carrying their brand. A box of Papyrus thank you cards is more per card than these totally customized, heavy card-stock photo cards with the message, colors, images, and layout that you want. For wedding and baby shower thank you notes, in particular, that is a great deal.

So go check them out! I love high-quality work, and these designs are fantastic. You can also email the owner – Jen – using this link. Let your stationary addiction run free

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Product Review Gifts for Moms: Imag-inations Designs

Gifts for Mom Product Review: Gigglesnort Greeting Cards

ACMJ — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:45:23 +0000

UPDATE: Our winner is…. Yvette! Congratulations Yvette!

Very few things make me truly laugh out loud. Homestar Runner can do it at times. The Onion, occasionally. But greeting cards? Never.

Until I got a pack of cards from gigglesnort Greetings.

These cards are originally designed by the creative force at gigglesnort, Carrie, who also happens to be a talented and touring musician and barrista extraordinaire (kind of hard to decide there which contributes more to making the world a better place – good music or good coffee… I might have to go with good coffee here.) She does not make coffee for others while touring, though; only for herself.

Carrie’s cards feature vintage, old family photographs mixed with humorous captions. The cards take their inspiration from family, relationships, and every-day life. Which is a fancy way of saying they are really funny.

Carrie has generously offered to do a giveaway of two, five-card packs for EHParenting readers. These cards are perfect for those occasions when you need a card at the last minute that can be anything – a birthday card, a thank you card, an “I’m sorry” card. And best of all, they don’t cost anywhere near as much as my Papyrus cards addiction does.

Can’t wait for the giveaway to end? Get a pack of gigglesnort’s funny greeting cards for yourself now.

THE GIVEAWAY:

gigglesnort has generously agreed to give away two five-packs of their all-ocassion cards to one EHParenting reader. This is a $20.00 value.

HOW TO ENTER:

1. Leave a comment below telling me why you would like this item.

For extra entries:

2. Subscribe to my RSS feed (and leave a comment telling me you did so). If you are already subscribed to the feed, just leave an additional comment telling me you are subscribed already. Make sure to use the same email address in the comment section you used to subscribe so I can check it.

3. Subscribe to get posts by email (and leave a comment telling me you did so). If you are already subscribed to get posts by email, just leave an additional comment telling me you are subscribed already. Make sure to use the same email address in the comment section you used to subscribe so I can check it.

4. Twitter this post and giveaway, and come back and leave a comment telling me you did so. I’ll even write the tweet for you so all you have to do is cut and paste.

@EHParenting is giving away the funniest greeting cards ever created. http://extrahourdinaryparenting.com

5. Follow EHParenting on Twitter! and come back and leave a comment telling me you did so (be sure to leave your Twitter ID).

6. Join the EHparenting Club.

Ok. That’s six ways to win. I’ll use randomizer to pick a winner on Monday, May 4. Join in the fun until then!

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Gifts for Mom Product Review: Gigglesnort Greeting Cards

EHParenting Around Town: Product Reviews in CoolBabyKid

ACMJ — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:36:38 +0000

I love this Ultimate Baby Gift Guide put together by CoolBabyKid. It features a wide range of ideas and products that would make any new parent’s day. EHParenting contributed suggestions for the Baby Name Blocks, the Engraved Books, and the Kind Notes jars, which we have reviewed here before. Take a look when you have a moment at the Guide and see if there is something fun you can get for yourself or give as a gift. And let us know what you like!

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EHParenting Around Town: Product Reviews in CoolBabyKid

Gifts for Mom Product Review #5 & Giveaway: Mommy’s Little Breastfeeding Book

ACMJ — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:08:06 +0000

THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Item(s): Mommy’s Little Breastfeeding Book

Category: Books for Pregnant Women and Parents

Price: $8.95

Characteristics: easy to read, inexpensive, great information, written by an expert

Recommended Number: one for you, one for your friends

Recommended Age: Pregnant ladies and new parents

THE DETAILS

For such a small item, there is a great deal of information packed inside its pages. I have read a lot of breastfeeding books, but this one has some information I had not seen before. Written by a nurse and lactaction consultant, it is easy to read, simple, yet thorough and informative.

What I like the most about it is that it is not a dissertation on breastfeeding. It is not preachy or judgemental. It is more of a “how-to”guide. As a result, there were several points in here that simply “clicked” in my head in a way that I had not really processed in the past. For instance, the author deals directly with the fact that some babies’ preference for cluster feeding contradicts the idea that newborns should eat every two hours. I remember being so worried that after eating off and on for four hours straight that my son did not want to feed at hour six. This book deals with troubleshooting “real life” situations rather than describing ideal ones.

In short, you can tell it is written by a lactation consultant who has seen a lot of the reality of how breastfeeding really works.

This is a deal at $8.95 and an absolutely fantastic (and unique!) baby shower gift.

I so want to keep it for myself. But for you, dear readers, I am going to do a giveaway with the copy I was sent.

HOW TO ENTER:

1. Leave a comment below telling me what aspect of the book looks the best to you.

For extra entries:

2. Subscribe to my RSS feed (and leave a comment telling me
you did so). If you are already subscribed to the feed, just leave an
additional comment telling me you are subscribed already. Make sure to
use the same email address in the comment section you used to subscribe
so I can check it.

3. Subscribe to get posts by email (and leave a comment
telling me you did so). If you are already subscribed to get posts by
email, just leave an additional comment telling me you are subscribed
already. Make sure to use the same email address in the comment section
you used to subscribe so I can check it.

4. Twitter this post and giveaway, and come back and leave a
comment telling me you did so. I’ll even write the tweet for you so all
you have to do is cut and paste.

@EHParenting has a great baby book giveway out! Check it out! http://extrahourdinaryparenting.com/2009/02/11/gifts-for-mom-product-review-breastfeeding-book

5. Follow EHParenting on Twitter! and come back and leave a comment telling me you did so (be sure to leave your Twitter ID).

6. Join the EHparenting Club.

Ok. That’s six ways to win. I’ll use randomizer to pick a winner next Thursday, February 26. Join in the fun until then!

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Gifts for Mom Product Review #5 & Giveaway: Mommy’s Little Breastfeeding Book

Extra (Hour)dinary Parenting » baby shower ideas: gifts for mom

Book Review: “Quiet Hero” a Lesson on Parenting’s Impact

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Day by Day Pregnancy Tip #14: Baby Shower Giveaway Ideas

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Mom-Preneur Product Review: Spell It Out Photos

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The Glowing Product Review: My Tot Clock

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Gifts for Mom Product Review: Light Up Your Child’s Mind

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Product Review Gifts for Mom: Your Best Birth

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Product Review Gifts for Moms: Imag-inations Designs

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Gifts for Mom Product Review: Gigglesnort Greeting Cards

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EHParenting Around Town: Product Reviews in CoolBabyKid

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Gifts for Mom Product Review #5 & Giveaway: Mommy’s Little Breastfeeding Book

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